8 August 2021 News/Editorial
We are off to the Isle of Arran for a few days, armed with golf clubs. It would be no surprise if, having prayed for rain here for weeks now, it buckets down in Arran when all we want is some calm and sun on the Shiskine links.
As I write this on Saturday evening, the forecasters are still giving severe weather warnings for later tonight and tomorrow, but as yet the Borders stoutly maintains its status as a largely rain free zone. It could still happen, but so far it has been chucking it down almost everywhere in the UK, except here.
As for the fishing, maybe 60 salmon were caught last week, possibly one of the lowest ever scores in recent times for the first week in August. We caught two here, 3lbs and 2lbs, because only salmon of that size can wriggle their way up this far without their backs being out of the water. I continue to hear that the pools around and below Norham are full of fish, but are showing little or no interest in any offerings of the angle.
The Met Office radar pictures show the storm clouds gathering over Galloway and Carlisle, where, surprise surprise, it has been raining for most of the day. But will those thunderstorms fizzle out, or make their way over the watershed to Tweedside and deposit enough rain to lift river levels appreciably?
I suspect we all know the answer, but you never know. We can but hope, for without water it is hard to see why anything should change.
And the 2021 salmon fishing season is rushing by apace. Over 2/3rds of it has gone and the score so far may be little more than 1,500. It could still all come good, and if it does, the next 6-8 weeks will be fun.
If.
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